1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to stereoscopic display methodologies and systems. More particularly, this invention relates to page flipping stereoscopic display methodologies and systems as well as apparatus used therein.
2. State of the Art
Stereoscopic display systems display two perspective images in such a way that each eye of the observer sees only one of the two images. There are many systems in existence that provide this capability through various methods. One of these methods in commonly referred to as “page flipping” or frame-sequential stereo video. In such methods, left and right perspective images are time-division multiplexed and thus displayed during different display periods (i.e., left and right perspective image display periods). Stereoscopic glasses (e.g., shutter-type or polarization-type glasses) are used to ensure that the left perspective images are presented to the left eye during the left perspective image display periods and that the right perspective images are presented to the right eye during the right perspective image display periods.
Autostereoscopic systems have been developed that utilize optics (e.g., lenticular systems, parallax barrier, mirror systems, etc.) to present the left perspective images to the left eye and the right perspective images to the right eye without the need for glasses. Such systems are costly and suffer from various technical problems such as limited depth of field, low brightness, and constrained view regions (i.e., the observer(s) are required to be located in limited viewing area(s) relative to the display).
Page flipping stereoscopic display systems are typically realized with a cathode ray tube (CRT) display that is adapted to operate in a progressive scan mode that alternately displays a left perspective image and a right perspective image. Such systems provide adequate performance but are limited by their screen size and weight. With this in mind, users have attempted to employ the prior art page flipping stereoscopic display methodologies to active-matrix liquid-crystal display (LCD) panels. Such panels advantageously provide for increased screen size and significant reductions in weight. However, when used for page flipping stereoscopic viewing, the line-based update mechanisms employed by LCD panels cause significant cross-frame image interference where the pixels from a left perspective image are displayed concurrently with pixels from a right perspective image as shown in FIG. 1. Such interference degrades the image quality and limits commercial acceptability of LCD-based stereoscopic display systems.